Video: Using the Shape Builder tool

One of the new tools that was added to Illustrator CS5 is something called the Shape Builder tool. You'll find that here inside of the Tools panel and the keyboard shortcut for it is Shift+M. You know, over the years Adobe has noticed that many people struggle with building artwork inside of Illustrator. Unfortunately, many people struggle with the Pen tool not realizing that it can be far more efficient to build shapes using Pathfinders like we've been discussing so far. However, admittedly, even if you take a look at the Pathfinder panel itself and I will go to the Window menu here just to open it up, you will note that the Pathfinder panel has many options inside of it and it can be sometimes difficult to understand which button to click at what time.

In Illustrator CS5 Essential Training, author Mordy Golding explains the core concepts and techniques that apply to any workflow in Illustrator, whether designing for print, the web, or assets for other applications. This course includes a detailed explanation of the elements that make up vector graphics—paths, strokes, and fills—and shows how to use each of the Illustrator drawing tools. Also demonstrated are techniques for combining and cleaning up paths, organizing paths into groups and layers, text editing, working with color, effects, and much more. Exercise files accompany the course.

Using the Shape Builder tool

One of the new tools that was added to Illustrator CS5 is something called theShape Builder tool. You'll find that here inside of the Tools panel and thekeyboard shortcut for it is Shift+M. You know, over the years Adobe hasnoticed that many people struggle with building artwork inside of Illustrator.Unfortunately, many people struggle with the Pen tool not realizing that itcan be far more efficient to build shapes using Pathfinders like we've been discussing so far.However, admittedly, even if you take a look at the Pathfinder panel itself andI will go to the Window menu here just to open it up, you will note that thePathfinder panel has many options inside of it and it can be sometimesdifficult to understand which button to click at what time.

So while working at Pathfinders can be very helpful inside Illustrator, Adobenotice that there is a lot of trial and error, meaning that people would selectsome artwork try one Pathfinder function, realize no, that wasn't it, maybeundo, try another one, until they finally got what they were looking for.Well, the Shape Builder tool was built to help alleviate the situation. In fact,rather than rely on Pathfinder itself, the Shape Builder tool allows us to takea more visual approach to the concept of shape building.So I am going to close the Pathfinder panel for now and let's start by focusingon this artwork right over here.

I am actually going to zoom in a little bit closer to this artwork, and beforewe use the Shape Builder tool on this piece of artwork, let's take a quick lookat how it actually works, because we are going to have to learn a few keyboardshortcuts along the way.So I will just grab my Ellipse tool here and I will create a circle.I'll switch to my Selection tool here, Option-drag to create a copy, and nowI have two overlapping circles.The first thing to note about working with the Shape Builder tool is that itonly works on artwork that's selected.Since I have nothing selected right now, you could see that my cursor has alittle circle with a line running through it.

Now remember that at anytime inside of Illustrator by pressing down theCommand key, you could temporarily toggle for the last selection tool that you were using.This is going to be increasingly important when you start using the ShapeBuilder tool, as it's the only way that it will allow you to make selections.So I am going to hold down my Command key and I am going to click and drag toselect these two circles, and now that they are both selected and I releasethe mouse, you'll see that now a plus appears next to my cursor for the Shape Builder tool.When I run my mouse over the shapes itself, Illustrator will highlight thoseregions or areas, and it will identify closed regions or areas that can nowbecome distinctive shapes.

For example, if I wanted both of these circles to be combined together into one, we know that there's a Pathfinder command called Unite that can make that happen.However, with the Shape Builder tool, since both of these are now selected, [00:02:439.88] I can start by clicking on the top shape right here, and then dragging down,and notice that now as I touch all these other three areas, they all becomehighlighted. When I release the mouse they will become joined into one new shape.In other words, I have just now performed the Pathfinder Unite, but I've done sovisually instead of just clicking on some icons inside of a panel.

Let's press Undo for a moment here, because what I just created now was a singleshape out of two shapes.Let's say I wanted to end up with that crescent shape.I only want this one shape in the bottom.But I want to remove these two areas right here.So to do that I am going to hold down my Option key and you can now see thatinstead of a plus next to my cursor, it changes to a minus sign.That means that I'm currently now in Subtract mode.So if now click and then drag downwards to highlight these two areas andrelease the mouse, I am left with only this crescent shape.

So we are starting to get an idea right now on how the Shape Builder tool works.It identifies all the overlapping regions of my artwork, granted that thatartwork is selected, and that allows me to either add or subtract thoseelements from each other.So I am going to delete this crescent shape right here and let's focus on theartwork that I see right here on my screen.Now first I need to select it. So I am going to press Command and then I amgoing to click and drag to marquee select all this artwork.Next, as I run my cursor of the Shape Builder tool over this artwork, you cansee that each individual area, even though they're not distinct shapes right now, show up as regions that can be turned into their own shapes.

If I wanted to combine all these, I can start by clicking and dragging tocombine these different areas.Now remember, I going to want this shape in the middle here to be hollow, so Idon't want to include that shape, so what I am going to do is click and dragaround the outside of this.And then once again, I can add on these little areas here to add those.Unfortunately, as you click and drag the line that gets created is a straightline and there is now way to create a curved line. So I can't just trace aroundthe outside, for example, of all these areas, but by clicking and dragging here,I can now combine all those shapes together.

However, as you can see, there is a lot of clicking and dragging going on.It can be somewhat tedious to do this.And while at first blush you might think that the fact that you need to makeselections in order to use the Shape Builder tool is somewhat of a disadvantage,if you think about how you want a create your artwork, you can actually use thisrequirement of making selections to your benefit.So to show you what I mean, I am actually going to go back to the File menuhere, choose Revert, because I want to go back to the state this document was inat the beginning, and I will just focus on this part of the document right here,so that we can use the Shape Builder tool to create the shape that we want.

Now I have the Shape Builder tool currently selected, but there's no artworkselected in my artboard, so I am going to press Command and then I click anddrag to select this artwork, and with the Command key still pressed down, I amalso now going to and add the Shift key.I am going to click on the circle with a thick outline to deselect it.So now all these shapes are selected, except for that circle right there.In other words, the calculations right now that the Shape Builder tool is doingare not taking to account this circle right here.Now while it's certainly true that I could start clicking and dragging tocombine these shapes together, notice that because I can only go in a straightline, it would require many multiple clicks and drags to select and fill thisentire piece of artwork.

So here's a little keyboard shortcut. If I move my Shape Builder cursor outabout over here and I click and drag, right now, you don't actually need to beinside of the piece of artwork.I can also hold down the Shift key to activate this Marquee mode. In other words, the same way that I just made the selection of these pieces of artwork to begin with.As I increase the size of my marquee, any area that falls within that marqueewill now be combined or united together into one shape.So with one click and drag and now I'll release the mouse, all of these elementshave now been combined together.

This circle was not touched because it wasn't selected, but now I actually wantto remove or cut out that circle from the shape.So what I will now do is hold down the Command key and then I will click and drag, so that now I have both the outside shape and the circle selected.I'll move my cursor to the circle on the inside here and I will hold down myOption key, because I want to remove this circle from the overall flower shape.So I'll click right now and what I have successfully done now is created anoverall flower shape that has a whole cut out of the center.

At this point, I can now go ahead and change the fill color of my flower and I am done.Speaking of the fill color itself, the Shape Builder tool actually has a lotmore functionality built into it.In fact, with a little bit of planning, you can even save yourself some steps,because the Shape Builder tool can not only build shapes.It can also color them at the same time.I'd like to show that to you and it will also be a great opportunity to review theconcepts that we have just learned.So once again I am going to go to the File menu. I am going to choose to revertmy file back to its original state. I will just zoom in a bit closer here onthis part of the flower.

Before I make my selection, I am actually going to double-click on the ShapeBuilder tool in the Tools panel.This brings up the Shape Builder Tool Options dialog box.Now at the very top there is an option here called Gap Detection. This isactually a pretty cool feature brought over from the Live Paint feature insideof Illustrator that allows you to connect their combine objects even if theyaren't exactly touching each other.For now, however, for the shapes that I've created I don't need to use thatsetting, but notice over here at the bottom where it says Options.There is a setting here called Cursor Swatch Preview and I have the ability topick a color from either Color Swatches or from Artwork itself.

I am actually going to choose Color Swatches here and I am going to turn on theCursor Swatch Preview setting and click OK.The first thing you'll notice as I start to work with my shapes here is thatonce I make my selection-- and I'll do that by pressing Command and then marqueedragging across the shapes to release.And then once again now, I'll press Command+Shift to deselect just thisone thick circle here.My cursor now looks somewhat different. Yes, I see that little arrow and plus sign,but on top of that I have three boxes.

The three boxes that appear here are actually my swatch indicators, and if Iopen up my Swatches panel right here, you can see that the first three swatchesinside of my document are none, white and then black.We don't count registration as a color here in this case.And if I take a look over here at the Preview, on the left you'll see thennone box, in the middle is a bigger box, which is the white box, and on theright is the black box.Well watch what happens now when I actually tap the right arrow on my keyboard.You can see that I am actually moving across the swatches panel.

For example, right now I have the yellow swatch selected. Just to the left is myred swatch, and just to the right is my green swatch, but as I'm working nowwith the Shape Builder tool, I have the ability to select a color which will beapplied as I combine and join my shapes together.So for example, if I wanted this to be a yellow flower, instead of firstcreating the shape then going to the Swatches panel and applying Yellow, Icould load up my cursor now with yellow and now I will start here and click anddrag by holding down the Shift key to activate the Marquee setting for the ShapeBuilder tool, and at the same time that it now combined all the shapes, it alsofilled them all yellow.

I will now press the Command key and I will click and drag to select all thisartwork, and then using the Shape Builder tool, I am going to Option+Click onjust the center to remove it.So again, here in this example, I was able to build my flower and color at thesame time using the Shape Builder tool.Again, it's just another way to think about how to create your artwork insideof Illustrator. Start by creating very simple shapes and then use eitherPathfinder functions or the new Shape Builder tool to create exactly whatyou're looking for.

Q: Despite clicking the rectangle icon on the toolbar, as shown in the video, the other tool shapes are not accessible in Illustrator. The rectangle is usable, but the star, ellipse, etc. are not, and do not appear anywhere in the toolbar. What is causing this problem?

A: These tools are grouped together, so to access them, click and hold the mouse for a second until the other tools appear. If that isn't happening, reset the Illustrator preferences file. To do so, quit Illustrator and then relaunch the application while pressing and holding the Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys. Once the Illustrator splash screen appears, release the keys and that will reset the preferences file.

Q: In the video “What are vector graphics,” the author states that if he creates a 1 inch x 1 inch Photoshop file at 300ppi image, there are 300 pixels in that image. Is that correct?

A: This statement is by the author was not totally correct. If the resolution is 300ppi, it means that there are 300 pixels across one inch, both vertically and horizontally. That would mean you'd have 90,000 pixels in a 1 inch x 1 inch image at 300 ppi.

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